Sum It Up
Summit Lake sits around 3400’ in elevation. So it’s appropriately named. It’s a small lake just east of Richwood, West Virginia. Cranberry Glades Wilderness surrounds the lake, so it’s a great place to shoot a spring time Milky Way panorama. Other than some light smoke in the sky, this cool June night was perfect.
Summit Lake doesn’t see as many visitors as a lot of other lakes in the state, which also makes it good place for night sky photography. I did have a few nice folks come by and talk to me. It’s always fun showing people the photos in the back of my camera as I’m taking them.
The left side of the image is north, east at the center, and the southern sky is on the right. Tracked panoramas are so much work, but they’re so dang cool!
Elakala Falls
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Lookout Milky Way
Droop, WV
From Top (of Seneca Rocks)
I drove across the state of West Virginia from Logan County to Pendleton County to spend a crystal-clear night in Seneca Rocks. I had a couple of shots in mind. The first would be from the top of the rocks around 9:30pm, and the other would be around 4am from the bottom. I’ve never tried to do two sessions in the same night, but conditions were too perfect to pass on either. We don’t get very many nights like this here in WV. No clouds, no haze, no smoke, no moon...just stars! Sleep would have to wait.
Hiking to the top of Seneca Rocks is moderately difficult but well worth it. Hiking the 2 miles from Yokum’s Motel to the top with 60+ pounds of camera gear is a bit more challenging, but it’s something that I’ve wanted to do for a while. I knew it would be a great location to shoot a tracked vertical panorama of the Milky Way. This time of year (late summer/early fall) the Milky Way stands vertically in the sky just as it’s getting dark.
I used one of my first lenses for the shoot. The old trusty 50mm f1.8. I have lenses that I’ve paid more for but produce far less impressive results. You can actually buy this lens used on eBay for around $100 or less. It’s light. It’s fast. It’s sharp. It’s perfect for tracked astrophotography.
The final image is 8 sections stacked vertically, plus focus stacked foreground photos.
8x24-$110
12x36-$196
20x60-$515
+6% WV sales tax
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To Bottom (of Seneca Rocks)
I made every excuse in the world not to go out at 3am, but the night wouldn’t let me off the hook. I had hiked the two miles from Yokum’s to the top of Seneca Rocks and back just a few hours prior. I was beat. I had shot a vertical panorama of the Milky Way core from the top, but my work wasn’t done. I had just got back around midnight. I laid down around 1am and got a couple hours of sleep, and then I dragged myself back out of bed for the second session of the night.
I’m always excited to see Orion making its way into the night sky in the early morning hours of late summer, but I’ve never tried to shoot it this early in the year. It almost looks out of place over a green landscape since Orion is synonymous with the winter night sky. That’s another reason I had to make this shot happen. I knew this composition would be great. All the ingredients for an epic landscape photo was there. The rocky peaks, the old homestead, the garden, the thick green trees, the nebulous clouds aligning with it all...It was now up to me to do it justice.
Cape Hatteras Lighthouse
Droop Cygnus Moonrise
A sunrise is great, but a moon rising in the night is even better. Especially when it’s paired with a dark sky full of stars. Droop Mountain is a perfect location for such a night. If you look close at the top of the tower on the right side you can even see the galaxy Andromeda peaking out.
This was a spur of the moment plan. This past weekend was pretty busy, but I saw how clear Sunday night would be so I had to get out. Nikki, even went with me.
There was a super nice family there watching the Milky Way rise into the sky. They asked if they should move, but I actually liked them there in the picture.
Night Fishing
Everyone knows about the Grist Mill at Babcock WV State Park, but you don’t see much about Boley Lake that’s just up the hill from the mill. When I got there Saturday around 7pm, there were just a few people fishing. By dark, only one group was left. You can see their lights on the right side of the photo. I think their lights and presence there on the lake gave the final image more life.
It was a calm and clear night. The summers are always busy for me with mine rescue training and traveling; I needed a night like this.
Seeing Red
Combining the autumn red of Dolly Sods and the nebulous red of the Cygnus region of the Milky Way seems so obvious, but it’s easier said than done. Although I’ve had the idea for a couple of years I haven’t been able to make it happen. The leaves are only red for a couple of weeks or so. Combine that with the necessary requirements of a clear night, a new moon, and a day off work, it was quite the challenge.
I was thrilled to get up there, thrilled that skies were clear, and then the green airglow…definitely an added bonus for the night!
Dark Sky Beauty
I love a starry sky, but I hate staying up late. I also hate getting up early. I like to be in bed when it’s dark (I’m sounding like an old man). Beauty Mountain is a 45-minute drive from my house, and I’d have to hike just over half a mile with a 50lb pack to this location. The Milky Way core would line up with the gorge there around 4:30am. So with drive time, hike, plus setup time considered, I’d have to get up before 2am. Bruh!!!
There’s been several nights/mornings that I’ve made my way to the gorge just to be greeted with a wall of fog. Things went my way this night. The sky was crystal clear. The morning was cool but comfortable. I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t excited as I saw this photo come together. I’m not sure if it’s just because I haven’t been able to photograph the core for a while, but I’m loving this picture. I hope you do too.
Rising Sun and Setting Moon of Dolly Sods
There’s a story behind every photo. I’ll never look at this photo without remembering the absolute misery I endured to capture it. Dolly Sods, West Virginia is a place like no other. The wild blueberry and huckleberry bushes turn fiery red in the fall. I really wanted to capture the location in a special way. The difficulty of creating a panorama with the setting moon and rising sun would be enough but doing it with a sprained ankle in frigid temperatures and blasting winds really made for an interesting time.
I’m not even sure how I hurt my ankle, but it took me around 45 minutes to limp out to this location (which was less than half a mile from my truck). I made the hike several times searching for the right composition. I actually went through the photographing process twice. Once on Sunday morning and again Sunday evening. Both were in relatively the same location. This image is facing north, and the other is facing south. All these trips really had my ankle throbbing.
I cut my trip a day short because I was almost positive my ankle was broken. By Monday morning every step was excruciating. I left feeling defeated. I had such big plans, but I was almost sure the photos that I had taken wouldn’t work for the panorama.
It took a lot of time, some trial and error, but to my surprise the photos stitched together. Piecing this behemoth of an image together was tough. I won’t go into all the boring details, but it crashed my software multiple times. The full image is actually 48 photos taken over a 30 minute period on October 9th. There’s 16 photos across in 3 rows. The final image is 1.2 gig. It’s 20,000x10,000 pixels. The largest a photo can be on social media is 2048x2048. So this was about 50 times that and is drastically downsized on here.
Wide-field Orion
I spent a cold November weekend with some great folks at the Calhoun County Park in West Virginia. The West Virginia Astrophotography Association hosted a star party, and Saturday night did not disappoint. The field was full of telescopes, eq mounts, cameras, and even a mobile observation dome. Beautiful dark and clear skies all night.
What you're seeing is an extremely active star forming region in our galaxy. The clouds of interstellar gas and dust collapse under gravity to form new stars. The Orion Constellation is the crowing jewel of the winter night sky.
Under the Bridge
Unplanned shots are the hardest for me. I obsess on conjunctions and conditions for a photo. I often drive by some amazing photos. This time I stopped. On the way down to the bottom of the gorge I saw this. I've seen it many times before, but it stood out. The autumn colors behind the bridge was too good. I'm glad I stopped.
Rising Moon and Setting Sun of Dolly Sods
Same story as the photo above. Same location. Different time. Different direction. Different lens.
There’s a story behind every photo. I’ll never look at this photo without remembering the absolute misery I endured to capture it. Dolly Sods, West Virginia is a place like no other. The wild blueberry and huckleberry bushes turn fiery red in the fall. I really wanted to capture the location in a special way. The difficulty of creating a panorama with the setting sun and rising moon would be enough but doing it with a sprained ankle in frigid temperatures and blasting winds really made for an interesting time.
I’m not even sure how I hurt my ankle, but it took me around 45 minutes to limp out to this location (which was less than half a mile from my truck). I made the hike several times searching for the right composition. I actually went through the photographing process twice. Once on Sunday morning and again Sunday evening. Both were in relatively the same location. This image is facing south on Sunday evening. All these trips really had my ankle throbbing.
I cut my trip a day short because I was almost positive my ankle was broken. By Monday morning every step was excruciating. I left feeling defeated. I had such big plans, but I was almost sure the photos that I had taken wouldn’t work for the panorama.
It took a lot of time, some trial and error, but to my surprise the photos stitched together.
The fog laying in the valley really made the view incredible. I almost always photograph the foreground during twilight while I still have a bit of residual light, but in the early morning hours a dense fog settled in the valley below me. I could the see the lights of Hillsboro, Droop, and Denmar glowing. While imaging the foreground in complete darkness isn’t easy, it was worth it.
This is a 180° panorama. The left side of the photo is looking north, and the right side is looking south. To the right you can see the core of our galaxy rising, the dark lanes of gas wind all the way through, and the Cygnus region to the left never disappoints with the rich hydrogen alpha gas shining red high in the sky.
Full Moon on the NRG Bridge
This may look like midday, but this was taken about 10pm. With a blend of some long exposures, I pulled this image together. The full moon lighting up the gorge really was awesome. All I had to do was endure some fire ants eating me alive.
One Side of the Story
Rho Ophiuchi is the body in the upper right corner. It’s always been one of my favorite parts of the Milky Way. It’s just so strange. The dark gas clouds stretching from the galactic core into this colorful, nebulous cloud complex. I realized that if I could find a location just northwest of the New River Gorge Bridge, I could catch Rho Ophiuchi rising over the span. There’s a rocky outcrop known as Sunshine Buttress in just such a spot.
The climb up is short but steep. The sky was relatively clear. There was a haze of clouds in the sky which is not exactly perfect for photographing a faint astronomical body just above the horizon, but it added some great colors to the sky. Fayetteville, West Virginia also produces quite a bit of light pollution (as all towns do), but I wanted the sky to be genuine. I do my best do reproduce a moment. I want the final image to be authentic.
Although we can’t see all that the camera can, it’s real. It’s even more real than we can see with our eyes. There’s nothing added. There’s nothing enlarged. There’s nothing moved. From Sunshine Buttress on the night of May 20th, this is what my camera could see.
Smoky Dolly Sods
Dolly Sods has been called the crowning jewel of the Monongahela National Forest. It’s the highest plateau east of the Mississippi River with an amazing history. In the 1700s the area was considered an impenetrable wilderness, but in the 1800s it was logged heavily. In the 1940s it was used as a military training ground, and in the 1990s 14 live motor shells was found and detonated there. Today it’s one of the most amazing places on earth.
Ironically, this once impenetrable area is now extremely popular with tourists and hikers, but the hikes there can be quite challenging. The last time I was there my foot was injured, and I could barely get around. This time I was able to go for a 7-mile hike offering open pastures, heavily wooded forests, and wet marshes. Incredible all the way!
The skies there are dark, and the night was mild and cloudless. However, huge wildfires in Canada has smoke wafting across Canada and the United States. If you look at this picture you can see the light haziness across the horizon. Get it together Canada…and eat some real bacon! Jokes aside, it was a great night. The little town at the center of the photo is Petersburg, WV.
Neowise on the Gorge
The comet Neowise passed through our solar system in the Summer of 2020. I had tried to capture it previously and failed. I knew that the comet was in the northern sky, and it would pass over the New River Gorge Bridge looking north. Long Point trail became an obvious choice to shoot from. It was cloudy when I left, and I almost went back home. My misses are as consistent as my hits. I stayed the course, hiked the mile and a half, and set up my camera. The clouds broke just a bit. This cosmic nomad made its appearance over the span of the New River Gorge Bridge.
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Colors of Dolly Sods
A 400mm lens is typically not the choice of landscape photographers, I've found that some incredible images come from that focal length. The colors of Dolly Sods in the fall are incredible. This sums it up.
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Orion Over Green Bank
The size of the dish isn’t obvious from this photo. The Robert C. Byrd Green Bank Radio Telescope has a diameter of 100 meters. An entire football field would fit in this thing. It’s a beast! I set up a mile away in the observatory parking lot on a cold -5° night to capture the Orion Constellation set on the giant satellite.
In the sky you can see Barnard’s Loop, the Horsehead, Orion, Lambda Orionis, and more. The sky was imaged with a modified Canon t3i on a small sky tracker at 50mm. “Modified” sounds more technical than it is. I took the camera apart and broke pieces out! The filters that come stock in a digital camera that prevent issues like red eyes also prevent the camera from recording the red hydrogen alpha in the night sky. The red structures are nebulous regions of our Milky Way where stars are forming.
I planned for it a couple months. I used Google Earth, PhotoPills, Stellarium, and Telescopius to prepare. I wasn’t exactly sure how close my calculations were, but Orion landed exactly where and when I expected. Very “cool” night!
I was honored to have this photo featured as NASA's Astronomy Picture of the Day (APOD) on February 23rd 2022
Galactic Queen
Last year I talked my wife, Red, into going on a Milky Way shoot with me for her first time. We set up on an idle surface coal mine in southern West Virginia and waited for the MW core to rise. She was a perfect model despite being a little bored. I was frustrated that the the low clouds rolled in, but now I think it looks cool
I had just started tracking at the time, but the subs were pretty good. I processed the photo and posted away. I always thought there may be a better version of this photo hidden in the data. After a winter of grinding through so much deep space imaging and processing, I was ready to give this image another try. I only used the RAWs from the original session. I've always loved this picture, but I like it even more now.
Autumn Grist Mill
My take on a classic West Virginia photograph. The Babcock State Park Grist Mill is synonymous with WV landscape photography. In fact, it’s one of the most photographed images in the world. It was important to me to do it justice.
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WV Mineral Moon
My youngest daughter Bella wanted to take some pictures of the full moon this week because she said it was supposed to be pink. LOL! It wasn’t pink, but we got some good stuff. The colors are enhanced but very real. The blues and oranges are from mineral deposits on the moon (iron, titanium, etc). I blended over 700 pictures at different exposure settings to bring out colors in different areas. We can’t see some of these color dynamics from mineral deposits with our eye, but like Prego, it’s in there!
Snowshoe Moon
From 10 miles away I caught the crescent moon rising behind Snowshoe Ski Resort. It looks so wild. It’s not fake or “Photoshopped” in any way. The weird shape of the moon is caused by refraction shooting through so much atmosphere. This is one single picture with only basic light and color edits. I had no internet from my location on the Highland Scenic Highway in Pocahontas County, so I took an educated guess on where I should be positioned and crossed my fingers. #lucky
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Capitol Moon
This is a single photo taken about 3/4 mile away from the West Virginia Capitol. My daughter, Oliviah had the idea, and we made it happen. Obviously timing is everything on a shot like this, and we almost missed it. We were stuck in traffic on our way from Beckley. We arrived just in time to watch the moon line up with our capitol’s golden dome.
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Seneca Cygnus
I spent a weekend with a good friend and photographer, Jon Eggleston, at Seneca Rocks. He thought it was funny that I didn’t even take a camera to the top when we hiked up early in the day. When I have a shot in mind, it’s hard for me to focus on anything else. Like most of my photos, after planning for the shot, I have to wait for a break in clouds, moon, and work.
The rocks formed from sedimentary deposits from ancient seas. They’re an odd feature setting in the hills of West Virginia. No picture can ever do them justice. They’re absolutely incredible!
Above the rocks you can see the North American, Pelican, Veil, and Butterfly Nebula (and more). Although the final image is made up of many RAW photos, the size, orientation, and location of the sky in relation to the foreground is accurate. Everything was shot at 24mm from the same location on the same night. The foreground was shot at blue hour, and the sky was imaged late that night (actually the next morning around 3am).
On Top of WV
At 4,862ft, Spruce Knob is the highest elevation in West Virginia. The core of the Milky Way rises and sets a little earlier each day, and by November it’s no longer in the night-sky. This was captured in October of 2020, and I knew it would be the last time I’d catch the Milky Way core that year. I watched as the heat of our galaxy settled on a cold night.
Autumn Sandstone Falls
Peachtree Fall Falls
Peachtree Falls is a little hidden gem in Raleigh County, WV. I’ve been there many times, but I had to revisit. The fall leaves turned in the pool below the falls while my shutter allowed the light to my sensor.
Lighting the Way
There’s so many possible compositions to shoot on the Outer Banks of North Carolina, but I chose to set up on these sticks on Avon Beach. I wanted the Milky Way touching the light from the Hatteras Lighthouse to be the focus. Standing close, the lighthouse is epic, but from a distance the light looks other worldly. So it felt fitting to shoot the core of our galaxy fading into the light of this famous beacon.
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Lower Fern Creek Falls
Might just be my favorite West Virginia waterfall
The Great Orion Nebula
After three nights over the last month of photographing the Orion Nebula, I had 5 hours of usable RAWs. Astrophotography is definitely teaching me patience! Orion is about 1300 lightyears from earth. Though faintly, it can be seen with the naked eye just under Orion’s Belt. It’s still weird seeing deep space objects in my camera screen.
Horsehead Nebula
I’ve been looking forward to giving this target another try. I realize I still suck at astrophotography, but I suck less than I did. I had so many problems trying to image this. Crashed a computer, lost power on my mount, couldn’t get my usb connections to work… Astrophotography is terrible, LOL
Here’s two nights worth of 200 second exposures on a Canon Rebel T3i
Highland Scenic Galaxy
The light trails on the highway are from my truck. I had to leave my camera shooting while driving up and down the road. The Highland Scenic Highway (Route 150) in Pocahontas County, WV is absolutely amazing rising over 4500 ’but doesn’t see a lot of traffic. I planned to shoot other passing cars, but there was none at the time I needed them. Adapt and overcome. That seemed to be the theme of the night. There is no phone service on that mountain. Making a shot like this happen without the internet presents some challenges since I use apps to determine the exact location of the Milky Way core, Polaris position for tracker alignment, and the best times to shoot. The dew fell so heavy that all my equipment was soaked. I had a couple hours of time lapse pictures on a separate camera, but the lens glass was soaked nearly the entire time. I love the challenge.
Whiteoak Creek Falls
Sunset from Dolly Sods
Dolly Sods Wilderness is located in Grant, Randolph, and Tucker Counties. Fires and extreme weather have rendered the location into an almost tundra-like landscape. While vacationing in the Canaan Valley with my wife and two daughters, I went out very early one morning and caught the sun rising over the valley. The fog on the valley settled like seas between the hills.
Grand Sunrise
The New River Gorge area is about a 30 minute drive for me. I’m commonly greeted by a white curtain of fog after driving out there early. This was a nice, clear morning. I forget what an incredible location this is. It’s close to home, and I’ve been there so many times that I sometimes take it for granted. This was taken from Grandview State Park.
Spruce Knob Lake MW
Dolly Sods Sunrise
It's hard to take a bad picture there!
Cascade Falls, VA
